A Stone House in Pokhara

and other tales

This Book is about the building of Mike Frame's house in Nepal, with digressions. There are stories and commentary on subjects as diverse as the scatology of pigs, how to grow the biggest rack of bananas in the village and a love triangle played out in the mountains. The book includes letters written home between 1962 and 1966, when Mike was a Peace Corps Volunteer, giving the reader an intensely personal account of a particular time and place.

About the author

Mike Frame (1940-2008)

Farm boy from Minnesota, Peace Corps Volunteer to Nepal, farmer, builder, restaurateur, innkeeper and writer, Mike spent most of his adult years in Nepal. His restaurant in Kathmandu, Mike's Breakfast, became a gathering place for people from all over the world.

"Okay thousands of us know Mike Frame was a laid-back hard worker and a terrific friend. A Stone House in Pokhara, wonderfully edited by his sister, Mary Ellen Frame, is a chance to spend hours with him talking directly to you in that familiar pun-filled voice about what he did and saw in Nepal as he did and saw it. His letters home to family are especially moving in their trust and intimacy as he chronicles gardening with no topsoil, trekking with no roads, doctoring locals, and building houses out of what’s on site with no machines. And that’s just his entry into transforming Nepal’s agronomy. He bakes cakes with no oven! When he describes house construction that keeps out “rain and tigers” you know you’re party to an adventure beyond anything you could make up. Fascinating, detailed, a gift." --- Mary Moore Easter